As you know, I do love giving information and education from the cozy confines of this blog. Many times I am sharing valuable information from various articles I have read, but sometimes I also find little tidbits of information that I feel would be of value to my loyal readers (and those of you who may not be so loyal, yet I love you anyway).

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Matt Lemmon via a Creative Commons license] Many driving regulations are focused primarily on work-related driving. But there are some of these regulations can be used to ensure proper safety of yourself and family members when on the vacationing road this summer.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Matt Lemmon via a Creative Commons license]The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) believes that front collision-avoidance systems should be made more standard among vehicles to, claiming such systems reduce rear-end crashes and would thus save lives. But they also think manufactuers shouldn’t raise prices of their cars to pay for it.

Today, I will be recapping a couple of brief notes that appeared in the most recent issue of Professional Safety magazine, published by ASSE. These provide some interesting safety insight – one about a U.S. bureaucracy that wants to see more mandatory safety equipment in cars, and another U.S. agency that wants to clarify itself with an existing regulation.

Bureaucratic clarity? Isn’t that an oxymoron? I digress …

Watch Your Back (Side)!

The National Transportation Safety Board in the U.S. has been active in gathering data about car accidents in America and formulating recommendations for policymakers that it believes will help reduce or eliminate deaths and injuries from car crashes. Of course, not much time has to pass before the NTSB would come out with a new report that makes recommendations. And you see the fake shock on my face, right?

The latest NTSB report addresses recommendations about forward-collision avoidance systems on vehicles, of course making the case to make such systems standard safety equipment on all vehicles (as standard as seat belts, which means not having to raise the price of the car) to cover it).  The NTSB states that these systems do help prevent rear-end crashes and thus mitigate injuries and deaths on roadways.

It’s a noble idea, at least so much so that the NTSB claims it has made similar recommendations before about a dozen other times over the last 20 years. But here I have a couple of concerns about this report.

First of all, the report admits that only four of more than 680 passenger-vehicle models have these systems in place as a standard feature as of the 2014 models. With so many models that could have this technology be standard, is there enough data out there to support the push for standard treatment rather than as an option? Do we know what collision-avoidance systems work really well and which ones do not? Is it possible to require standard equipment on every model if some manufacturers haven’t quite worked out the technology, but the few that have should carry the torch for everyone?

I am certainly not against safety by any stretch, but there certainly must be a reason why these systems are not already standard equipment on more models. And I postulate that there should be no push for additional safety regulations until the technology has caught up to the point that all systems work to a certain effectiveness threshold. What do you think? Do you have experience with these systems? What is your feedback about them? I am curious to learn!

For more information about this, by the way, you can check out this link.

What We Really Mean Is ….

Another U.S. safety organization, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) is also speaking up about regulations and rules, but not making recommendations but instead proposing an amendment that would clear up an administrative rule regarding workplace accident safety logs.

The rule that has been in place has required employers to keep records of recordable illnesses and injuries on the worksite for five years. There have apparently been questions as to whether the employer could stop reporting if the initial injury or illness has been addreseed and the worker had returned to work on a full-time basis.

But this proposed rule change would clarify the rule to state that the five-year timetable is what is important when making such reports, and that employers will be required to keep records for the full five years. OSHA is at the point now where it is soliciting pubblic comment and feedback on the rule change before it votes to put it in force.

If you would like to read more about the rule change proposal, check this link. And if you have interest in submitting a comment, visit www.regulations.gov and see Docket No. OSHA 2015-0006.